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FTC was founded in 1986 in San Francisco by Kent Uyehara as one of the founding skate-shop brands of the iconic SF Haight Street skate-scene of the 1980s-1990s. The FTC brand and the eponymous SF skate-shop have been continuously operating from the same Haight Street location for nearly 40 years — making FTC one of the longest-continuously-operating American skate-shop brands and one of the defining anchors of the broader SF-and-broader-Northern-California skate-culture ecosystem. The FTC vocabulary settled around several recurring elements: heavyweight cotton tees and hoodies with the brand's iconic FTC typography logo and shifting seasonal graphic-design references, deconstructed denim and workwear-derived skate trousers, the brand's iconic FTC skate-deck programme featuring deliberately-SF-skate-aesthetic graphic references, the long-running FTC × Nike SB, FTC × Asics, FTC × Vans, and FTC × New Balance collaboration capsules, and a colour palette anchored to washed-black, washed-navy, ecru, oxblood, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red, electric-blue, and the iconic 1980s-1990s-SF-skate-aesthetic accent combinations. The brand is independent and held by Uyehara through the broader FTC parent operation that also operates the iconic SF Haight Street flagship retail-space, plus an expanded Sacramento and Tokyo FTC locations (FTC Tokyo, in Shibuya, has been one of the defining Japanese skate-specialty retailers since the 1990s). The brand has been one of the most rigorously continuously-operating American skate-shop brands, with the deliberately-SF-skate-cultural-positioning specifically anchoring the brand inside the broader American 'authentic-skate-shop-brand' conversation that has been continuously rewritten since 1986.

Shop Secondhand

Archive and rare FTC pieces mostly circulate on the resale market. Japanese sites don't ship to China — buy via a proxy like Buyee; most Western sites ship internationally or are reachable with a US/EU forwarder.

How to buy secondhand →

Timeline5

  1. 1986

    FTC Opens in San Francisco

    Kent Uyehara founds FTC (For The City) in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury as a core skate shop serving Bay Area skaters.

  2. 1994

    FTC Skate Team

    FTC's skate team becomes one of the most influential rosters on the West Coast, defining a generation of street skating.

  3. 2000

    Tokyo & Barcelona Stores

    FTC opens stores in Tokyo and Barcelona, becoming one of the first American skate shops with true international footprint.

  4. 2015

    Original Mission Closure & Move

    FTC closes its historic Haight Street location and relocates to Mission Street, preserving its San Francisco roots.

  5. 2021

    35th Anniversary

    FTC celebrates 35 years with archival capsules and reissues marking its place in skateboarding history.

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